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Only a moment, time and again stolen from an unfeeling reality, a shadow, which accompanies me always and everywhere, except here.
A forsaken castle chamber, a storehouse of inutile objects. An old, marred mirror leans askew against a wobbly, broken rocker armchair.
Such an impotent object. I could splinter it into fragments with a non-verbal spell, yet every one of them would blame me more. Smooth and glossy, the surface voicelessly screams as soon as I enter the room of allurement.
Unspoken accusations slash into my flesh. They burn, howl, echo, murmur: "Pushover. Weakling. Coward. You can't help yourself. You've given in. You are condemned."
Label me any mark, but I'm not a coward. Throughout my life I've lost the majority of what meant anything to me. Maybe even my pride, my reputation, a chance for vengeance, and love. Even what's perhaps left is to be taken over by a somewhat special glass scrap? No, not really.
I alone. A voice within. A conscience which kills. I can muffle it in one way alone. I escape it and I lose myself in a utopia, which had never existed as I see it now. Do I?
No mirages, no illusions, no hope. Only a sentience that you can undergo a few damned moments, while simultaneously knowing all too well that they will disappear into the non-being, drift among the never-fulfilled desires of many, descend within the dreams into the blackness.
Another reason that I'm not, in fact, afraid. Of the dark, anyway. The light, the charlatan, sheds radiance, lays bare, unveils all sides, but nothing changes. Bare facts - you can't distort them, let alone conceive your own design.
Unfortunately, the light is the truth, and the truth hurts. The pain is me, and I draw my strength from the lies. You get used to it.